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Monday, October 29, 2012

Insanity is the one word I would use to describe the past week and a half-ish. In fact, it's difficult for me to believe that it was only that long ago that C and I spent the day at my sister's house helping to keep her kids happy and busy while she packed their house up for a weekend move. We went back to do the same thing on moving day (Oct 20). My sister has 5 children, ages 13 years - 11 weeks, so she can use a hand, or 4, keeping the kids occupied when they have a major project going on such as packing up the whole house in boxes to move!

Sadly, the move did not go as smoothly as one would have hoped. Without hashing through the details, there were several injuries- one which took my 7-year old nephew to Johns Hopkins Hospital in a helicopter, and another that required my brother-in-law to see an orthopedic specialist within 48-hours of moving day. While all were at the hospital, J and I stayed at the house (the one they were moving out of) with 3 of the kids- they took the infant and of course the injured one- until about 1am. The great news is that everyone was fine, they just required some specialized treatment. As dire as the situation sounds, my nephew was calm enough to enjoy his first helicopter ride and tell us about it later. He was a champ. Everyone is home now, and after a few more days of frantic work, the move is complete.

That event settled down around Wednesday of last week, just in time for us to start preparations for J's sister's wedding this past Saturday. Family & friends began arriving in town on Thursday from as far away as Detroit, Dallas, and Salt Lake City. Thursday night we had a big family dinner at a local restaurant which just happens to bear the family name (coincidence, no relation), followed by a relaxed "after party" at my in-laws' house where many cousins played and ran and danced until bed time. At said party I was able to capture an adorable video of C doing the cupid shuffle with her aunts, uncles & cousins.

Friday morning we got up early to do some yoga, then spent most of the day at a nearby salon getting manicures & pedicures. We rehearsed for the wedding at 5, and then had a lovely dinner to celebrate and hang out before the big event.

Playing with her cousin, Collin

The groom serenading the bride :)

Being silly with uncle Frank

Saturday started with hair and make-up being done throughout the morning, and before we knew it we were all in dresses looking stunning. We got to the church right on time and the ceremony went perfectly. Unfortunately since I didn't get to spend very much time with C on Friday or Saturday, she was way out of sorts by Saturday evening. As if I wasn't struggling enough to keep my emotions under control as I walked down the aisle, she was in the 2nd row crying and screaming, "Hold you mommy!" over and over from the time she could see me until J finally left the sanctuary with her when the processional was over. Sadly I was a bit distracted and worried about her through the rest of the ceremony.

After the ceremony we took C to my mom's house and she was perfectly happy. She happily got down and pulled out her favorite toys and started playing. She kissed us goodbye without a care and went on to have a perfectly fine night. And so did we! The reception was great, held at a lovely mansion not too far from our hometown. Food was delish, dancing was fun, we may have had a little too much fun with the photo-booth... but the bottom line is that we had a good time!

If that didn't make for a crazy enough weekend/week/weekend, we had only Sunday to prepare for hurricane Sandy to hit today. Thanks to the crazy weekend we had last weekend and the busy week in between, we had approximately 0 groceries in the house. I was afraid to buy anything that had to be cooked or refrigerated in case the power went out, so I grabbed what I could at Trader Joe's. I tried to focus on things we could spread peanut butter on like apples, bananas, and crackers. I also picked up some trail mix and protein bars. It has been raining hard and extremely windy all day so far, and we're being told that the next 12 hours will be the most intense. We're lucky and still have power. We've actually never lost power in this house for more than a few minutes at a time and that has been extremely rare, so I'm hopeful that our power might stay on through the night. Of course, if that's the case then I'm kicking myself for not buying any real food to eat. My biggest concern is the big trees behind our house. They're very tall and very skinny which means they always wave around far more than I'm comfortable with whenever it gets stormy outside. Our bedroom is across the back of the house so we'll be sleeping in the guest room in the front of the house tonight. Of course, the front of the house is also the north side which is currently where the winds are coming from. That is supposed to change over night to southern winds. The good news there is that the wind will be blowing against the back of the house instead of the front, but that also means it will be blowing those trees toward the back of our house which is a very rare direction for winds around here. Makes me nervous!

At this point, it's time to have a little snack and snuggle up before we head up to bed for the night. Our lights have been flickering ever so slightly over the past hour or so. Fingers crossed that they stay on. It's going to be cold tonight and tomorrow. I'll update soon!

Thursday, October 18, 2012

This past weekend was a big one in our family. We celebrated four family birthdays, one of our siblings moved, and we made a big family trip out to the pumpkin patch. We didn't squish all of this into two days though. The celebrations started on Thursday night with our nephew's 2nd birthday party. J gets a holiday from his company for his birthday (which was officially on Sunday) so he took that on Friday for us to spend the day together. Saturday we celebrated another nephew's first birthday, and Sunday we went to the pumpkin patch with my siblings, my mom, and all 7 cousins. Fortunately, we love being with family so 4 straight days with them made an awesome weekend for us :)